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Viewers of Super Mario 64 speedrunner, Bubzia, presumably spent an entire 60 minutes chewing off their fingernails—not because he was doing poorly, but because he was doing rather well. See, Bubzia is a special kind of speedrunner, choosing to tackle his game of choice with a blindfold on, and he’s been grinding at his world record for over two months.
However, not being able to see makes you oblivious to your stream chat (probably a positive, if we’re being honest) and, crucially, any hardware failures. Which is a huge problem, because any blindfolded run needs full video evidence—an uninterrupted webcam recording—to be considered valid.
As spotted by our friends over at GamesRadar+, Bubzia very nearly ran into this problem after grinding his own world record in the 70-star category for over 70 days—at roughly 26 minutes into the run, his webcam broke, invalidating the entire thing.
Unable to hear the digital screams of his viewership, or even understand that something had gone wrong, Bubzia started to smash it. Every segment saw him setting a world-record pace, even though his little hardware mishap would’ve rendered it all null and void. What follows is about 60 minutes of nail-biting hilarity as his viewers engage in a bizzaro-world outpouring of support by hoping he’d mess up.
An hour later, as Bubzia shaves close to the world record—missing it by less than a minute—the chat erupts in cheers and GGs, thankful that he hadn’t just completely screwed himself out of a hard-earned win. You can see the exact moment the coin drops in the above video at around 3:03:00. “If this would’ve been a world record, I would’ve cried. I would’ve quit Super Mario 64, man.”
In a later post to X, Bubzia says he’s considering either finding a run-legal extension that can warn him if his camera gives up the ghost, or just having a couple of trusted friends who can give him a ring if something is up: “That is probably a good idea,” he writes.
To give you an idea of just how close he came to unclaimable glory, the previous WR, set by Bubzia in 2023, is one hour, 25 minutes, and 11 seconds. This run was one hour, 26 minutes, and nine seconds—a difference of 58 seconds. One or two fewer messups in the run, and he would’ve successfully snatched a victory he couldn’t celebrate. If there was ever a good time to use the phrase ‘mission failed successfully’, I reckon it’s here.
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Kurt Indovina
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